Last updated on October 19th, 2022

We set goals in our personal life, so why should our blogs be any different? Learn to set blogging goals for your business that will help you maximize your time and grow your blog faster than ever.

Even before we started and grew our team here at Simplifying DIY Design, we were never really ‘planner people.’

With our constant juggle of kids, family, charity work, church groups, and even other businesses, we spent more time crossing things out rather than using it to stay on track.

Our schedules were constantly changing. Unfortunately, our planners just couldn’t adapt along with us.

Ready to set achievable goals? Use our FREE Asana Goal-Setting Board Template and map out your blogging goals so you can have the most profitable, focused year yet!

To make matters worse, it was impossible to keep our team organized, let alone move the needle forward.

We knew we needed something digital. Something our whole team could access from anywhere, update in a second, and grow with us as we made our way up the six-figure ladder.

All without a steep learning curve or hefty price tag.

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Now, that was just half the battle.

We never struggled with how to set goals for our blog. No… It was figuring out WHAT we all needed to work on collectively to achieve those goals in our small pockets of time.

Because, you know, life.

Learning to set our blogging goals that we could actually achieve AND plan out made all the difference in our blog.

Our friend (and business coach) Kristen from Blog Your Genius told us about her office whiteboard system.

Around the same time, we purchased the Blog Goal Overhaul Planner System from Kim Anderson which is truly worth its weight in gold.

Armed with our new tools, we created a Trello board system that actually worked for us!

Creating this system designed specifically for us was seriously a game-changer.

It wasn’t until we scaled into a consistent six-figure company that we decided to switch to Asana, which we’ll chat about later in this post.

However, if you want to really dig deep into effectively breaking down your blogging goals into actionable steps that you can “roadmap” through each quarter, we highly recommend the Blog Goal Overhaul Planner System.

Our Asana Goal-Setting System

Now, if you came here hoping this tutorial would be centered around Trello, hear us out.

Asana and Trello are VERY similar in how they both operate. Lists, cards, tags – it’s all the same, so you’ll still get the idea of how we use our goal-setting system.

Not to mention we’re still offering our FREE Goal-Setting Trello board template as well as in Asana!

Now that that’s out of the way let’s jump right in.

Identify three blogging goals for the quarter.

Your goals should be attainable but big enough to give you that scary/excited feeling.

Keep in mind that if your goals are too “easy,” you won’t feel motivated. However, if they’re too big, you’ll feel defeated.

It’s a balance only you can find.

We also like to choose goals directly related to our big yearly goal.

Let’s say our BIG goal is to make six figures this year. Our quarterly blogging goals need to bring us closer to that. What would that entail?

We’ll look at our funnels and work backward to determine our quarterly goals.

Related Post: The Ultimate Guide to Designing a Funnel That Converts

We can’t make money with our blog unless our audience knows about us. To do that, we need website traffic.

Okay, we have the traffic. Now what? We need a way to make money from that traffic.

Email list. We’ll increase our subscriber base.

Just because we have subscribers doesn’t mean we’re making any money. How do we get our email list to make our blog money?

We need some income, whether it’s from products, affiliates, sponsored posts, or client work.

We’re ready to map out our three blogging goals for the quarter.

1. Make $100 blogging
2. Increase subscribers
3. Increase traffic

If your goals look like this, then you need to stop right now.

Your blogging goals need to be specific and measurable.

Using our process, we’ll go back and refine those goals to get us one step closer to determining ACTIONABLE steps.

It’s the HOW behind your goals!

1. Create a tripwire product to generate $100 per month
2. Sign up 100 new subscribers per quarter
3. Increase traffic from 10k to 20k monthly views

These are much more specific, don’t you think?

We don’t simply state that we want to make more money but instead designate a task to accomplish that (for example, the tripwire product).

Related Post: Tripwire Product Ideas to Design for Your Blog Today

In addition, we’ve specified how much we want to grow our email list and how much we want to increase our traffic.

We firmly believe in the ‘out of sight out of mind’ mentality.

To prevent that, the first column in our Asana board is for our ‘Goals.’

Break down goals into a master task list

For this, we want to brain dump all the possible things we need to do to reach each of our blogging goals.

If it’s a task that we need to do but doesn’t DIRECTLY relate to one of our THREE quarterly goals, then it does NOT go on the list.

Focused, intentional work that moves the needle forward is what we’re aiming for.

PRO TIP: Stay organized with tags. As you build out your goal-setting system, these colored tags will help you identify goals and applicable tasks quickly and easily.

Now that you have all your goals stepped out into tasks, arrange them in the order of completion.

If you find that one can be broken down into even more steps (which is highly likely), add it to a checklist within that card.

To do that:

1. Click on the card
2. Located the “Checklist” option on the right side of the card
3. Add tasks to the checklist
4. When you complete a task, just click on the checkbox to mark it as ‘Done’

While we don’t do it for every task, we make sure to set deadlines for ones that absolutely need to be done by a specific date.

If we have a big promotion we’re prepping for, we’ll use due dates to launch on time. If something needs to be sent to another team member, due dates will follow suit.

Monthly goal-planning breakdown

Now that we have our quarters mapped out, we need to break it down further by planning our months.

Looking at our list of tasks in order of completion, we have a few things to consider here.

Which tasks are the most time-consuming? What tasks rely on others to be completed first?

Knowing this, we can break down our quarter into either one month, two months, or three months’ worth of tasks.

For example, our tasks to CREATE A TRIPWIRE are a bit more time-consuming than those needed to INCREASE SUBSCRIBERS.

We’ll break up our tripwire tasks into more manageable, bite-sized chunks throughout the quarter. We can quickly check those off for subscriber tasks within one month, thanks to our design templates!

Weekly goal-planning breakdown

Now that we have our year –> quarter –> month tasks complete, we can work on our weekly goals.

We have quite a few type-A gals on our team. The more thorough our lists, the happier they are!

Depending on the task and its urgency, we’ll go as far as to create daily tasks. But most of the time, we’re perfectly happy week-by-week.

Even though it’s so simple, this is truly magic. We NEVER have to think about what we “should” be doing when we sit at the computer.

There is a vast difference between being productive and being busy.

To help us realize this, we documented our every movement for one week straight.

If we’re checking email, it went on our list. If we’re designing new lead magnets for a product, it went on the list. Even if we found ourselves going down the Facebook rabbit hole, it went on the list.

At the end of each day, we saw our progress.

Having that visual right in front of us spoke volumes. We saw that we were spending a good chunk of time on tasks that were NOT directly related to one of the blogging goals we had set for ourselves.

Talk about an ah-ha moment!

Why we made the switch to Asana

When we first started with Trello as a brand new business, it worked perfectly at no cost to us. All the features we needed to keep us organized were available on the free plan.

As we grew, we found that we were spending quite a bit on Power-Ups and, eventually Trello Gold. It started to feel like we had maxed out its versatility (for us) and used many workarounds and backdoors to fit with our current systems in our business.

But, we kept with it thinking it would be a logistical nightmare to move to another program.

It wasn’t until we saw a webinar about Asana that we realized we were stunting our growth.

We had the opportunity to see Asana work in real-time, doing everything we wanted Trello to do.

That webinar was Uplevel With Asana, which has completely revolutionized our business.

Aside from having the most intuitive blogging goals strategy, we have systems in place for content maintenance, product creation, affiliate marketing, the works.

We have an entire 365 days planned and mapped out, which is such an incredible feeling.

Long story long, Trello was a fantastic starting point for our business. And when it was time to graduate, Asana was there to help us scale to new heights.

Set blogging goals and rock them

Everything we do for our blog has a rhyme or reason. It’s pushing us to grow, try new things, and make waves in the blogging industry.

This is why we turn off comments, remove social media apps from our phones, and disable notifications on our computers. When we’re working, we need to be focused.

We can’t waste a single second.

This goal-setting system lets us see what tasks are constantly being pushed aside. We then can evaluate why we’re not getting them done.

Maybe something needs to be broken down more, researched, or completely outsourced.

We do what works for this incredible team and us. Will it work for every blogger out there? No. But, as we say time and time again, that’s the beauty of templates and systems like Asana and Trello.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS POST:

• Blog Goal Overhaul Planner System
• FREE Asana Goal-Setting Board Template
• Uplevel With Asana
• FREE Asana roadmap + workshop
• The Ultimate Guide to Designing a Funnel That Converts

Don’t forget to grab our FREE Asana Goal-Setting Board Template! Finally, map out your blogging goals to have the most profitable, focused year yet!

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To be honest? It’s the best $12.99/mo OR $119/yr we spend on our business because that time we save with every single design is put back into making MORE money in your business!

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Last updated on October 11th, 2021

Visual Elements For New Blog Launches – what do you need?

This is a question I get asked a lot! So in this article, I want to go over what I truly believe to be the graphic elements you need for your brand new blog (and what you don’t).

Let me start by saying my opinion might differ from every single graphic design blog you might come across but I’m ok with it.

When I was a new blogger I was so overwhelmed with the number of voices out there and how they were all saying different things.

I get the frustration, I promise I do.

But that’s also how I learned whose ideas I wanted to follow and learn from, so here it goes!

Creating a Brand As a New Blogger

Now, most designers might tell you that you should hire a designer for an amazing logo and brand kit to get started.

You’ll answer questions about your mission and messaging in order to create this beautiful brand with the perfect colors and fonts.

My question is: how do you know that’s your true brand?

The first place to start, is by taking The 5 Minute Brand. It includes awesome templates to help you develop a beautiful brand for your blog.

Fun fact! My very first blog was “shifted focus” 3 times before I was comfortable with who I was speaking to and what I was writing about.

I didn’t know much about blogging when I first started so it took me a while to really find my “lane”.

So, here’s the brutally honest truth: if you’re so new that you have:

• Less than 20 blog posts written
• Little idea of “who” you’re speaking to (your avatar) and why you want to help them
• Little idea of how to blog as a business (like how you’ll monetize, what an email list is, etc)
• No email list (you’re using a RSS feed instead of an email list)

Then I recommend a completely simple DIY approach to your brand.

This is something that should take you no more than 2 days to do and then I don’t want you to touch it at all.

New bloggers sometimes spend weeks on tweaking their brand so it’s perfect.

Then they go back a few weeks later to tweak again.

Your colors and fonts are not what’s going to set you up for success.

Determining your avatar and creating content (blog posts and freebies) will!

Investing time and energy into actually learning how to make money with your blog will go further than investing money into a web design or brand specialist.

If you’re that brand new blogger, here’s what I recommend: create a basic text logo and then start writing!

Write, write, write! Write blog posts, learn about email lists (I use and love convertkit) and write a welcome nurture sequence. Write content for freebies so you can grow your list.

Just start writing.

And no, I don’t recommend keeping your blog private or hidden in any way- likely no one will find it anyway until you start actively promoting it.

What About New, But Not BRAND NEW Bloggers?

Ok, NOW is when I recommend getting a little more involved with design!

You have a blog set up, you have a good amount of pillar posts written, and you have set up your email service provider.

Now you have some great content to promote. You might even have your first freebie to start growing your email list with.

Now is when you may want to invest in design services. That being said, I understand that design services can be quite expensive.

At this point, people may be seeing some growth but they may not be making a ton of money yet.

So hiring a designer to create a logo for $250-500 or a branded website for $1000-1500 is just not possible.

This is why most bloggers at this stage go the template route since you can get the same (or similar- depending on how you edit it, of course) quality of design.

But you’re editing them yourself which brings the cost way down and the designs are so flexible and can be used over and over for just about anything.

Related post: How to Brand Your Blog And Achieve Brand Consistency

So What Designs Should Be Prioritized At This Stage?

This is the million-dollar question! Here’s what I recommend when you’ve got your foundation set and you’re ready for promotion of your blog:

• A set of colors and fonts that you use over and over on your site and in your designs (a basic brand. Note: I have a free brand board in my design library you can use)
• Social media headers for all your platforms (you can set up your platforms but start really getting serious growing just one at a time to avoid overwhelm)
• Pin images for all of your blog posts (recommended size: 1000x1500px)
• Facebook images for all your blog posts (recommended size for images posted directly to Facebook or used for ads: 1080x1080px, for images uploaded to your Yoast or Rank Math plugin: 1200x628px)
• Featured image for all your blog posts (size varies depending on your theme)
• A set of 2-3 graphics that specifically promote your lead magnet so you can use them on Facebook and Pinterest to send people directly to your opt-in page
• Design of the actual lead magnet
• At this point, you may want to invest in a quality paid WordPress theme (still much cheaper than hiring a designer for a custom website) and if that theme requires images such as category graphics, etc then you’ll want to set that up appropriately.

If you’re looking for the ultimate hack for creating a brand you love, check out the Five Minute Brand! With over 40+ logos and done-for-you, ready to customize brands, you’ll be able to create a brand that’s perfectly you in just minutes! Not only does it have logos and brand boards, but it also include templates for all the other graphics you need for branding your blog, email newsletter, and more!

As You Grow Your Blog, Your Design Priorities Will Shift

Maybe you’ll start a podcast and you’ll need graphics for that. Maybe you’ll start designing digital products and lead magnets.

Maybe you’ll start getting more active on various social media platforms and doing stories.

==> If you’re looking for templates for all these things, check out The Complete Blogger Template Toolkit!

You don’t have to be everywhere at once when you get started. You don’t have to nail down your design or have everything perfect before you hit publish, you just need to start writing.

Once you have that foundation- you can go back to the design but still be strategic about how you spend your time inside of Canva.

Your logo probably doesn’t need to be tweaked…but designing a new lead magnet?

THAT time is well spent.

Spend your time creating designs that will bring you the most amount of growth in the least amount of time.

Then, when you’re making a good income- you can rebrand with a custom website and refined logo, etc.

By that time, you’ll know your avatar inside and out and you’ll know exactly what message you want your brand to convey.

You will have likely shifted and clarified your message over and over and now you’re comfortable with exactly who you are in this online space.

This is when you’ll want to invest in that branding package or website design.

Until then, remember that everything can be changed and what really matters, in the beginning, is that you just get started!

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